One Month Free Rent Isn’t a Marketing Strategy

One month free is not a marketing strategy—and in today’s competitive multifamily market, generic concessions are no longer enough to stand out.

In this episode of The Multifamily Marketers Podcast, hosts Josh Grillo and Caroline Mills break down how apartment communities should think about specials, concessions, and promotional offers strategically instead of simply throwing discounts at occupancy problems.

From Disney fireworks packages and surf lessons to waived fees and move-in perks, this episode explores how creative, experience-driven concessions can outperform traditional “one month free” offers while protecting revenue and improving leasing velocity.

You’ll learn:

• Why concessions should solve a specific leasing problem—not become the strategy
• When specials actually make sense: lease-ups, competition, renovations, and seasonality
• Why throwing more discounts at operational problems rarely works
• The difference between generic concessions and high perceived-value offers
• Creative concession ideas that stand out beyond “one month free”
• Why consistency across websites, ads, ILSs, and onsite teams matters
• How to measure whether a concession is actually improving leasing performance

To suggest a topic, get in touch!

For more multifamily marketing help, connect with us at Resident360.

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TRANSCRIPT

Episode 42: One Month Free Rent Isn’t a Marketing Strategy

Podcast Co-Hosts: Josh Grillo and Caroline Mills, Resident360

Josh: Welcome back to the Multifamily Marketers Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Grillo, co-founder here at Resident360, and I’m joined by my co-host, Miss Caroline Mills. Caroline, how was your weekend in Florida? This is your second weekend in Florida, right?

Caroline: Yes. Technically, it’s our first weekend in our apartment, but our second weekend in Florida overall. So we’ve made it down! You guys can’t see it, but I have a new background behind me, and I’m still putting things away. It was actually great. Everyone jokes about the Florida afternoon showers: “Just wait, you’re going to get rain every single day.” But this weekend was beautiful. It was sunny and 90 all weekend. We were out by the pool and got to relax. We had some rain at night, but we had a great, sunny weekend and got settled. We got all our furniture, so it was good. What about you guys?

Josh: It was kind of a marine-layer weekend here in San Diego. San Diego in May is known for “May Gray.” May started off pretty nice for the first couple of weeks, but now it’s back to its normal May Gray self. A lot of marine layer comes in, so it’s pretty much gray skies at the beaches. Inland, it’s in the mid-70s. But overall, it’s San Diego. The weather is pleasant, clouds or not. So one question for you: Is Florida meeting your expectations so far?

Caroline: It is. So far I can’t complain. We had a rough winter in North Carolina, and here we’re sitting on our balcony every morning drinking coffee, looking at palm trees, and it’s 75 degrees and sunny. You cannot complain. It’s just so nice. We have a beautiful saltwater pool and everything, so I don’t even have to leave. It feels like being on vacation, because it’s sunny and warm with palm trees, but that’s just life now. So it’s definitely meeting and exceeding expectations.

Josh: That is your life now. Right before we started recording, we were talking about concessions, and you mentioned this would be a good show topic. Tell us a bit about some of the concessions you’re seeing down there, being so close to Disney.

Caroline: Yes, I was telling Josh about a really cool one. I’m about 10 or 15 minutes from Disney, and we were talking about the concession packages I’m seeing properties give away. One offers a private fireworks viewing at Magic Kingdom. I thought that was really cool, because it’s what got me thinking about the perceived value of concessions.

For the property management company, two tickets might cost $200 or $300 per person, so $400 to $600 total. But compare the perceived value with a month free. You think, “Oh my gosh, I get a private viewing at Disney World as part of my concession package?” It seems so much bigger. And when I looked at the rent, their two-bedrooms go for about $2,000. What a crazy deal, and what a good idea. That’s the perceived value of a concession. They’re getting one month free plus a private fireworks viewing at Disney, and they’re thinking, “Wow, that’s fantastic.” Is it working? I don’t work at the property, so I’m not sure. But it really caught my eye. First, it was different. Second, the perceived value seems so much larger than just saying “one and a half months free.” You feel like you’re getting a lot more. So I thought it was really neat, and it brought up some cool ideas we’ll dive into today.

Josh: Yep. So if you haven’t guessed it, today’s show is all about specials and concessions. With summer right upon us, you’re starting to see a lot of concessions and specials out there. We wanted to break it all down: some of the good ones we’re seeing and some mistakes properties might be making, so you can make an informed decision about any concessions you run at your properties. Caroline, let’s start at the top. Why do apartment communities offer specials in the first place? Why even do it?

Caroline: At the core, specials are meant to drive demand and increase leasing velocity. They’re meant to grab someone’s eye and draw them in. Sometimes it’s a property in lease-up that needs to fill units quickly. Other times it’s a property that’s stabilized, or once was, and is now facing occupancy issues due to new competition, a seasonal slowdown, or other challenges.

But the important thing is understanding the problem you’re trying to solve. One of the biggest mistakes I see is communities asking, “What special should we run?” before asking, “What challenge are we trying to address?” We’ll dive into that more, but it’s something I talk about with clients on calls all the time. If traffic is low, that may require a different approach than if traffic is strong but tours just aren’t converting.

Josh: So when would you say a special is actually justified?

Caroline: When it makes sense. Let’s start with lease-ups, the clearest example. When you’re bringing units online and trying to build momentum and velocity, concessions can be very effective.

Another is when you’re in an especially competitive market. If multiple new communities are opening nearby or supply is increasing, renters have more options than they used to; people call it a renter’s market. A concession can help you stand out.

Renovations and repositioning projects are another great example. If ownership has invested in upgrades or is renovating, a special can encourage prospects to take another look while those improvements are being made.

And then seasonality. Depending on the market, some communities use specials strategically to maintain leasing pace, so they don’t end up with a big batch of units coming available at once. They might use specials in the winter, when leasing typically slows, to help maintain occupancy.

Josh: What about the flip side? When are specials not the answer?

Caroline: This is one of my favorites, because it’s very easy for management companies or even marketers to say, “Let’s just throw a special up. Let’s put a special banner on the website. Let’s add a pop-up.” But if your leasing team isn’t following up with leads, a special won’t fix that. All it does is bring in more leads they can’t follow up with. So it comes down to: What will it not fix? What’s the actual root problem? If you’re missing phone calls, a special won’t fix that. If your tours aren’t converting, a special won’t fix that.

Another one we talk about all the time, as you know, is online reputation. If your reputation is suffering because of operational or maintenance issues, and prospects are seeing that in AI summaries, a concession won’t solve that problem. Marketing and specials can generate interest and traffic, but if the prospect experience breaks down somewhere in the process, offering more money usually just means sacrificing revenue without addressing the root issue. If we can’t get people to lease in the first place, or they won’t like it there, or they see all these issues, throwing more money at it won’t solve it.

Josh: Let’s get specific. We mentioned you being near Disney and what you’re seeing there. What other common specials are you seeing right now? You’re talking with properties every day.

Caroline: The most common is definitely one to two and a half months free. That’s the one we all see.

Josh: Is that like the default, one month free?

Caroline: Yes, that’s the default. But I’ll talk about the difference between the default and what I think stands out better.

You also see “look and lease,” which is good because it creates urgency. You’ll often see something like, “One month free, plus look and lease: Sign within 24 hours, and we’ll waive your application and admin fees.” That’s a big one. I like it, and I think waived fees are one of the most underrated concessions. Moving is expensive, and when you’re applying for an apartment, you’re still paying rent somewhere else. You might be paying two application fees, an admin fee, a deposit, and it all comes really fast. Waived fees make it easy for someone to say, “Sure, let me go ahead and apply. At least I’m not losing a bunch of money.”

Then there’s the difference between common specials like one month free (the default, like you said) and something that’s truly special and stands out. Like the fireworks at Magic Kingdom. Another property we were talking about previously is actually offering furniture packages as part of its concessions. You’re walking a prospect through a staged two-bedroom, and they say, “Oh my gosh, I love that couch.” And you say, “That’s fantastic. Would you like that as your move-in gift, as your concession?” They say, “Oh my gosh, yes. It fits perfectly, and it’s the color I was going for. This is exactly what I wanted.” Little do they know that couch only cost you $1,200, and their rent is maybe $3,000. You’ve saved a lot by offering the couch instead of one month free. So get very strategic with it.

I saw one on the coast that offered six weeks of surfing lessons. I thought, “Man, that’s really cool.” Again, the perceived value is very different. It caught my eye, and you think, “Oh my gosh, that’s huge. I’d never go out of my way to book surfing lessons; that seems like a big investment.” But little do you know, it’s equal to about one month of rent. They’re just changing it up to differentiate themselves. If you’re looking at competitors, say new developments in a market, one is offering two months free, and another is offering six weeks of surfing lessons, a month free, and waived application and admin fees. It’s the same cost, but the perceived value is different. I think that’s one of my favorite things in specials conversations.

Josh: That’s cool. It makes me think of the cellphone companies battling it out. They all say the same thing: “Make the switch. Make the switch.” It would be really cool to see multifamily properties piggyback on something from TV. The cellphone companies have spent billions of dollars hammering “Make the switch” into your brain. So: “Make the switch. We’ll cover a certain percentage of your current lease terms if you sign a 36-month lease with us,” or whatever it is. There might be a cool little marketing play there. I don’t know; it requires more thought, but…

Caroline: I like that one. That was a good one. I’ve also seen moving costs covered. If you’re a management company with a pretty saturated presence in an area, you can partner with local moving companies. You might get discounts or a referral kickback, and then you can offer to pay a portion of residents’ moves. You say, “I’ll pay $500 toward your move,” or “I’ll pay $1,000.” If they’re moving from down the street, the whole move might not cost more than $1,000 to begin with. Now you’ve made their move incredibly easy. Again, it’s perceived value. It takes the burden off the person, and it can be worth the same as or less than a month free.

Josh: Does it really pay to stand out? Say you’re in a very competitive market with lots of properties, and obviously everybody is offering one month free. Does it pay to be the one property that does something completely off the wall, so people say, “Okay, that’s completely different. I never thought about that”? When everybody is lumped into one month free and your property offers surf lessons or choose-your-own furniture or whatever else, I guess standing out like that really plays into the marketing side of the special.

Caroline: Completely, exactly like you said. And when you carry it into your paid media, putting it in your headlines and descriptions, someone will see it on Google before they even get to your website. It catches their eye. They think, “Wait a minute. I get free tickets to Disney, or a free couch with my apartment? That’s crazy. Let me at least see what they’re talking about.” You’ll at least gain that interest and get eyes on it. Or a couple is talking and says, “Oh my gosh, I was looking up apartments, and this one had this crazy offer. I’m getting surf lessons. How crazy is that?” It at least sparks a conversation, and they’ll remember you.

Josh: Shifting to the marketing side: Once a property decides on a special, what should it do to promote it? Does it need to carry the special through all of its advertising? Give me the foundation of promoting a special.

Caroline: Absolutely, 100%. The biggest thing is consistency, and it’s something I check with my teams and hold them to. Your website, your ILSs, your Google Ads, your Facebook ads, your regular Facebook posts, whatever it is, all need to stay consistent. The last thing you want is someone confused by something outdated. If I look at your website on May 26th and see “Two months free and a free Disney fireworks show until May 15th,” I’ll think, “Well, I guess I missed that one,” and move on. That may not be the case; you just forgot to update it. Or you don’t want someone saying, “One place says one month free, but on Google you say two months free.” Keep it consistent, and make sure it’s incorporated throughout the renter’s journey: your website, Google Ads, social media, and email marketing campaigns.

And make sure your leasing team knows what it is. That’s another disconnect I’ve seen. Marketing and the regional manager say, “This is fantastic; these are the specials we’re doing.” Then it gets to the on-site team, and they say, “Nobody told me what our specials are. I don’t know what’s happening.” So people come in for tours, and the on-site team doesn’t know the special. You want the prospect to encounter the same message everywhere they interact with you.

The second piece is making sure the marketing strategy matches the promotion. If you’re running a look-and-lease incentive, your messaging should emphasize urgency. If you’re offering preferred employer discounts, your targeting should focus on those employer audiences. The strategy behind the promotion matters just as much as the special itself.

Josh: How hard is it to keep up with all that, though? I’d assume every special has an expiration date. It doesn’t run forever.

Caroline: I’d recommend it, yes.

Josh: So number one, you have a special with an expiration date. But carrying it through all the advertising and then making sure it gets removed sounds like a big ask for a property.

Caroline: It can be. My biggest piece of advice: Make it one person’s job. If multiple people try to manage it, it gets too confusing, and someone assumes someone else did it. Have one person, and have them update everything at once. You don’t want it to be, “Okay, let me change the ILSs, and I meet with my PPC person next Tuesday, so I’ll tell them then.” Don’t do that. It only takes five minutes to sit down and go through all your systems and send out all your emails. Some clients just BCC us on one email to all their marketing partners, so we all see it at the same time and make our own updates.

Josh: So you’re saying have a “specials gatekeeper,” if you will, who’s in charge of making sure the special is implemented and updated?

Caroline: I like that. Yes, exactly, to maintain consistency.

Josh: Got it. Should they track all this in something like a Google Sheet? Is that the ideal?

Caroline: It’s up to your team. At a management company I worked for, we used a help-desk ticket system to submit our updates, so you could go back and see all the tickets someone had submitted, and it helped you track when each one was completed. And make sure your on-site teams and your community manager know what’s going on. What you really want is to make sure these specials are effective. If you changed from “two months free” to “two months free plus surfing lessons” at the beginning of May, is it paying off? Is it actually working? You need to know when these changes happen so you can track whether they’re effective.

Josh: I’ve got a question about promoting a special. Where do you like to see it on a website? A property is offering a special. Where should it be shown? A little push-down banner? What’s the ideal way to promote a special on a website?

Caroline: Great question; I like that one. I love a special to be static. With pop-ups, there’s the technical side and the human side. People get so many pop-ups (we’ve talked about this before) that they click all the X’s out of habit, without even meaning to. If I’m looking at 10 property websites that day trying to decide where to live, I’m going to forget what you said. And the site is probably tracking my cookies, so when I come back, the special doesn’t pop up anymore, and I don’t see it. Now I’m thinking, “Main Street Apartments has no specials, but 123 Apartments down the street does.” You lose them there.

With a static special, I like it on the homepage to capture attention right away, and also on the floor plans page. Someone clicking around a website forgets what they saw, or they finally get into the mindset of, “Okay, let me see if I can afford this. Let me see if I qualify. Let me find the unit I want. Oh my gosh, I love this two-bedroom. Ugh, what was the special again?” Then they have to go back to the homepage, and now you’re losing them because you’re making them spend too much time. So I like it to catch their eye on the homepage and stay static on the floor plans page. I like a banner at the top. Different websites handle it differently, but it should at least be static.

Josh: Makes sense. Let’s switch to mistakes. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see properties make with specials?

Caroline: One you touched on: not having an end date. You don’t want to run the same concession indefinitely. You want to create urgency and make it feel like it won’t last forever, even if you know it probably won’t change much in the next 30 days. At least put a date on it and check back in.

Consistency again. You don’t want to offer too many specials at once. I’ve seen sites with a dropdown listing 10 things: “One-bedrooms get this, this, and this; two-bedrooms get this, this, and this; and if you sign within 24 hours, you get this.” It’s too confusing. Now I don’t even understand what I’m looking at or what I’m getting. Also, specials that don’t match across channels or never get updated.

Not measuring success: Is it working or not? And too often, communities throw out specials hoping to increase occupancy without addressing the other issues we talked about. Did the special increase traffic? Did tour volume actually increase? Are you getting qualified applications? Did conversion rates improve? Those are the questions to ask, not just, “Should we add another month to the concession?”

Josh: So you need to analyze whether the special is actually working. That’s probably the biggest thing if you’re running a special. Did it move the needle or not?

Caroline: Yes, exactly. I think that’s one of the most overlooked things.

Josh: All right, Caroline, let’s do a quick rapid-fire round. I think this one will be fun. Are you ready?

Caroline: I’m ready.

Josh: One month free or reduced rent?

Caroline: One month free. It has higher perceived value, and it’s usually easier to market.

Josh: Ooh, okay. Most underrated concession?

Caroline: Waived fees. I’m going back to them. Moving is expensive, and waived fees are nice.

Josh: Now the flip side: most overrated concession?

Caroline: Small gift cards. Honestly, I’d rather you take the money off my rent than give me a $250 gift card I have to wait for until I move in and get activated. I’d rather just have it off my rent.

Josh: All right. Biggest misconception about apartment specials?

Caroline: That they can solve all your leasing problems. They definitely can’t. They’re a tool, but you don’t want them to be your strategy.

Josh: That was great. All right, let’s wrap this episode up. Any final tips on concessions for everybody listening, Caroline?

Caroline: Ask your on-site team. I think that’s one of the most overlooked things. Marketers and regional managers often have these conversations among themselves, but the on-site team is the one that has to put it into practice. Your leasing specialists are the ones in contact with people touring every day. What are they hearing about properties down the street? What do they think will sell the apartment? One of my favorite things was getting to come up with something fun I was excited about for tours. If I’m more excited about the special I’m leasing with, I’ll get my prospects more excited about it. So make sure you bring your on-site team into these discussions.

Josh: Great insight. All right, we’ll wrap the show up there. Thank you, everybody, for joining us for another episode of the Multifamily Marketers Podcast. We’ll be back next week with another episode. Take care, Caroline. I appreciate all your valuable insight, and we’ll see you guys next week. Take care. Bye.

Caroline: Thank you, guys. Bye!